The business software maker's bankers have approached potential suitors including software companies and large private-equity firms to see if they are interested in buying BMC or a part of it, the Journal said, citing sources.

The company's shares were up 4.3 percent at $43.26 in afternoon trade on the Nasdaq. At that price, BMC has a market value of $6.9 billion.

BMC, which makes software for storage management, database performance and data recovery, was under pressure to sell itself earlier this year from activist shareholder Elliott Management.

The company adopted a shareholder rights plan to help stave off a potential acquisition in May, after the hedge fund acquired over 5 percent stake of BMC.

Elliott had also presented a list of potential buyers for the company. The list included International Business Machines Corp , Oracle Corp and Dell Inc , and private equity firms KKR & Co LP , Blackstone Group LP

and Bain Capital.

Elliott and its associates collectively owned 7.7 percent of BMC stock as of Aug 2.

BMC and Elliott could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore and Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)